


To The Watchers

by Beatrice_Sank



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Dido is having none of it, It Goes About As Well As We All Know It Does, Other, Relationships in the Castle Are Complicated, Spirits, the Best Laid Plans of Gods and Men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 18:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20493218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank
Summary: "Consider a room. And within it, the world."Inside a castle, two lonely spirits contemplate the lives of Twin Peaks residents, with very different stances.Very roughly follows the events of season 1 and 2 from the Castle by the Sea perspective."There's a jolt, quasi-electric,when one of our mythsreverts to abstraction."Upper World, Rae Armantrout





	To The Watchers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilysetration](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ilysetration).

> Written for wonderfulxstrange challenge, as a gift to ilysetration (https://ilysetration.tumblr.com/). I chose to explore the spirits' life, as you asked! I'd like to say it turned out weirder than I expected, but that would be lie ^^. I hope you like it!

Consider a room.

Consider a room, and within it, the world.

  
And within it, a room. And within it a woman and a man, facing each other, holding out their arms in a circle to a tune that is both too joyful and too sad. Now they are swinging slowly, out of rhythm.

What time is it ?

The shutters are always closed, for the light comes from elsewhere. There is a tear, falling down between them, falling down into the circle. And once it’s fallen, there’s no coming back.

What time is it again ?

Consider faces of stone, one round and one sharp, glistening from within in that aged shade of white you only find on the polished skin of old movie stars as they turn their head slightly to take the light for their close-up.

Within their arms, the circle remains. And within it, the world. Consider them closely.

Watch.

Listen.

And round and round it goes.

*

She’s not from here, to begin with. This is important.

It means she’s allowed to climb the stairs with something of a detached expression on her face, to take small steps, one at a time, because those are steep and sharp and her dress barely allows her any space to breathe or to indulge in swift gestures. The majesty that comes with the tight boning and the fragile beaded fabric has its share of corseted languor. One might say she lives at her own pace. But in reality (isn’t that amusing), it’s the robe that dictates the rhythm. In any case she certainly lives to her own taste. The silent queen of a slow realm. 24 images of heartbeat per second.

Take a breath. Let it echo through the vast cathedral of the hall.

The staircases are deadly, have such an edge that she would, if the color was on – but it’s not, not today – cut her heels and bleed red footprints all over the black and white strips, a bloody piano murder, until anyone could follow her track, and that is of course out of the question, she has strong opinions over the matter but now, now… – she will take a pause. Feel the air entering her mouth, and she will close her eyes, and forget. Just for a second.

Breathe deeply. Now. Where were we?

One step at a time. She’s immune to the tricks of the light in here because, and that is equally important, her hands are free. Her very name says as much and she would speak up if they had ever gotten round to give her a voice. But oh, that’s an easily solved mystery.

Dido.

It’s round on her lips as she roams the carpeted floors, no ring attached, lightly treading where no one else can.

Almost.

*

There are numbers on the wall, and they must mean something. Otherwise why would they be here, and why would people choose to push this wooden door, that is 11, and not that wooden door, 10. There is, he believes, a reason for this.

And just like that, he steps out of the dark.

*

She can’t remember climbing the last step, but suddenly she finds herself in her usual place. The lounge is waiting for her in smooth grayness, her couch, that she knows to be golden bronze, standing in the middle, and hanging above it a mirror she makes great effort never to think about. Though they saw fit to acquire them at some point, the colors were always there, distilled in the degrees of shadows. These days they’re on and off, as if they couldn’t afford them anymore, but let’s see, she always thinks and doesn’t say._ Let’s see._

She’s standing still under a great candelabra whose branches waves in the exact curls of her hair, the metal blank and unforgiving over her head. Looking up, she opens her hand, and suddenly there are thousands, millions of microscopic specks crawling over her arms, climbing up her neck, nesting in the curve of her ears and trying to gain access under her lids, colors spreading like a colony of ants. She closes her hand. Everything is gray again.

Well someone is playing tricks on them, and she won’t have it. But not right now. Now, she has to go and sit very straight, as she always does, her back against the cushions and her feet not touching the floor, as the TV set switches on, the only colored square in the room. It’s time for her show. It always is. She watches intently as names replace names on the screen. Repeatedly, she comes into her power.

*

One way or another, there is something to be done. This is important. It’s the certainty that pushes him through every threshold as if they were actual velvet curtains one moves aside with a bit of nerves, heart beating a little faster in anticipation, before entering the stage.

He’s everywhere. He can go everywhere, and everywhere he goes the signs are always there, calling him, urging him to speak. Numbers on a plaque at the entrance of a lonely town. Cries of owls in the trees. People wearing the same name. Music, again and again.

On his best days he can cross the hall in a few strides, cut through the endless cycles of corridors and not even feel the slightest wind on his brow, determined as he is to make sense of everything. And if he retreats behind his face, if the howling, crushing sounds that surround this place to his torment leave him in peace, if he empties the world, methodically, around his own mind, trimming the edges of his own consciousness until he’s at the center of a blank circle of serenity and silence, he thinks he can. Almost. If he raises his head, high, he can embrace and erase the entirety of the hall, and be content that no one has a clearer view than his.

Think. Underneath it all, there is an order to be found. Somehow, there is a lesson to be learned.

But there’s always something ringing somewhere, always a reason or other to get alarmed, always an undercurrent of violence cracking through everything like a forest fire. Renouncing heights, he usually lives with his ear to the ground, wary of anything that might creep into it, vibrating ominously. Power lays in surveillance: he knows it and he’s prepared. He spent all this time bending metal until it follows the twists and turns of his mind, his careful calculations, to make sure that there’s not a sigh in the world that won’t be, in part, his, as he receives its echo against the hem of his shirt, because he never lets them reach deeper. Some lost voices get stuck in his machines from time to time, he’s aware, but there are so many of them and after baying for a way out, they usually take to monitor everything too. Whatever their motives, he’s grateful for the help.

They are so many distressed signals piercing through his skull, waves and waves of almost identical shrilling cries coming in a flow, filling up the rooms like smoke. Plastic cracking. A scream. Footsteps, running through the woods. A young girl, crying. A fan. Slot machines in a casino going off one after the other. Alarms, alarms. A gunshot. Cars honking. The quiet buzzing of a lamp, and someone driving away in the distance. Someone…

Listen. Listen carefully, somewhere around here the air is moving. In, and then out. The carpet is being crushed in very precise points. It stops. Metal springs squeak tiredly. Silence. And then, coming from nowhere, a soft hum, pieces of a broken melody.

There’s someone else here.

*

Call her picky but it’s a crying shame there is no room service in those parts. She has her ways, though. As she watches the screen, there’s always tall glasses of milk for her to drink, and slices of pomegranate that leave bloody crescents under her nails. She puts plates of it everywhere in the house for the lost souls to find – she always liked to share –, the garnet quarters abandoned on the white porcelain glowing violently in the dark. From time to time she also throws an old-fashioned gown in the sea, knowing someone will make good use of it, eventually.

As faces appear behind the glass, she watches them. She watches them all. It’s a belief that she will never let go of, that everyone needs to be looked at, really looked at, in the right way. Until they get to see for themselves.

The TV is bright and exotic like a summer day against the gray shades of the wallpaper, and she’s not spying, not forcing them to do anything; but as she watches, they are reminded that they are seen, that they are, in some way, understood.

The faces have names she knows by heart but likes to forget, because it’s more fun this way, to discover them again and remember the soft lines and the odd expressions.

She watches as a policeman with amusing elevated hair takes pictures of a blue body wrapped in plastic. As he lowers his head, she bends forward and, reaching out with the tip of her fingers, brushes the space where his shoulder should be, until he begins to cry.

Touch is nothing, to be touched in this way means nothing at all but the feeling remains, a memory. This is her territory. So, one by one, as they enter the screen, she holds them in her gaze and keeps them there for a second in the gentle curve of her eyes, face lighted like a benevolent moon, slowly cradling them back and forth, while in the background an old record keeps playing.

*

There is a girl running away from the screen, from right to left, her face hidden in her hands. She’s screaming. Inside the classroom, her voice reverberates. It doesn’t matter. We don’t know her yet. Maybe we never will. But as it crosses through the glass, her scream breaks down in pieces, and another girl begins to cry.

Which one, you ask. It would make a difference.

*

When she opens her eyes again, a young girl who looks just like that fairy tale princess who fell asleep after too many bites of apple pie is standing in front of a jukebox. She watches as she puts a coin into it and begins to dance with herself to her favorite song, as if the world was dispensable, the provincial town fading in the background. And though she’ll always remain invisible, she knows they are dancing together: she remembers the steps and the way the body must be moved. It’s a dance that calls for a specific eye, after all. It makes her sleepy too, but she won’t drift away right now, because right now she’s dancing with Audrey Horne, and this is important.

When it’s over, she closes her eyes.

*

There’s something like irony in the fact that, while he’s the one to keep records of who goes in and who goes out, he cannot shake the feeling that somebody’s breathing down his neck. As far as he’s concerned, he’s doing the haunting, appearing and disappearing into the night, muffling every sound to deliver messages. He shouldn’t get his own ghost. But there’s a balance to be maintained, plans to be made, and as he presses warm buttons on the side of a desk, he tries not to think about it. He can feel a headache coming.

*

The shutters here are always closed. It makes for a charged atmosphere, but there’s nothing she can do about it, not with all the electric devices guarding every room. So instead, she paints her nails. Small bottles of thick polish can always be found under the couch, as if someone thought her power could be dissolved in futility and heady ethyl vapors. It’s sweet, she decides as she draws a careful trail at the end of her ring finger, how wrong people can sometimes be.

The castle feels smaller and comfier today, and maybe she’s imagining it, but it seems to her that, behind the shutters, there is green, carpeting a sunny landscape of white, squared walls, their angles smoothed by the light. She can almost hear bells ringing, wheels turning and turning along gray ribbons of road, flat as the back of her hand and straight as parallel timelines. Combustion engines. Bicycles. Yes, she’s curious about that. The outside. Imagine that.

She raises her hand to her face, taking in the minuscule trees on every nail, rows of firs under a starry sky, and blows on it softly.

*

Think. Think deeper. A light switches on, and then a plan comes into existence.

All his calculations have pointed him toward a room, at a particular time of the night. The girl has fallen asleep listening to Tears for Fears, and she doesn’t even look surprised when she meets his silhouette with drowsy eyes, black hair in disarray, only politely curious, still dreaming. He doesn’t pay attention to the carefully watered plants, the half-hidden teddy bear waving at him from behind the pillow, the worn out poetry paperback abandoned on the floor. He’s here to do what he does best, what he’s supposed to do. He calls for help.

“Madeleine Ferguson,” he says. “It is happening.”

She gives no reaction, waiting for him to continue, or maybe for the dream to unfurls until she can forget all about this strange man in her bedroom.

“Where you are needed, you will find her voice. Sparkwood and 21. The secrets are hidden in fruits and flowers. Listen. This is important.”

And as he falls into solemn silence, the buzzing of his presence slowly getting absorbed by the music posters on the wall, she smiles at him sleepily, as to an old friend, and whispers “okay,” like she’s agreeing to meet at the park later.

Then, after a pause, snuggling back under her cover, she adds indistinctly:

“Please, call me Maddy.”

*

She has her favorites, of course. It would be hard not to. And so she watches as the angry doctor who nurses the dead by making little cuts through their bodies in the hope of finding a reason hurls one more barb at the sheriff, sending him over the edge.

“Listen to me,” he says between clenched teeth as he’s being held by the collar.

She stares at them, and slowly, she smiles. Something switches. Suddenly, he’s telling the truth, explaining to a dumbfound officer of the law that he has chosen the hard way of peace.

“...the foundation of such a method… is love. I love you Sheriff Truman.”

She claps her hands in delight, careful not to ruin her nails. Albert’s truths always bleed through the cuts, and she knows it’s what helps him saying “thanks but no thanks, I don’t feel like a murderer today” every time his function tries to tempt him to a gun. He needs all the help he can get to keep it that way, and it’s something precious, to be guarded. He needs someone to look at him.

She remembers kissing Harriet Hayward’s hair as she recited her poem in front of mashed potatoes and a dead turkey. She remembers stroking Gersten’s as she played the piano. She remembers Margaret, of course, who so often looked back at her, holding her gaze, that it almost feels like they move in the same way now. She remembers every face, from the first time she laid eyes on it. And Laura… although she knew her from the first, Laura always was a framed picture. Still, she loved her to the end of the world.

The thing is… The thing is, sometimes her attention wanders. After that overwhelming time in the theater, after Laura, she had slept for ages. Nobody could bear scrutiny for too long anyway. She herself got so much from images, so many emotions, that it was hard to focus. And when it got too dark, she closed her eyes.

She kept them closed for months.

*

He walks through the rooms urgently, listening for ideas. The agent has forgotten something, as they always, always do. Instruments of measure are beeping mercilessly, while outside, the waves crash against the shore, licking the edges of a rose garden where he almost never sets foot. The sounds of crumpling flowers kill any thought better than even the cracks of fire, so he opens door upon door, hoping his mind will light up, looking for generators. Let it not be said that he once shied away from his responsibilities. Oh, _She_ certainly does. He’s listened to her doze off through entire crises more times than he cares to remember and yet, as he runs past her, there is always that glint in her eyes, like she knows a joke he never heard of.

It's not his fault. People get it wrong, most of the time. It seems that every time he takes a look at them, they start repeating themselves. It makes him wonder if there is not two of him, occasionally. But mostly, it’s lonely. Well, there is always Her.

A bulb is hanging from a ceiling, as a reel turns. Think. The wood is calling, somewhere. Secretly, the wind is rising. The bulb lights up. There are other ways to carry messages.

The room he just stepped in is filled with glass boxes, piled up against the wall and all the way to the distant ceiling, higher than even he can see. Inside each box, crickets are stridulating in a strange canon, vibrations bouncing around in a way that makes his tongue tingle. The insects’ dark eyes are all turned toward him, expecting. He never meant to cross here, but it seems like he has to. The noises begin to increase in volume as the crickets grow more agitated, the waves, the machines, even the flowers coming through from other rooms, gaining strength, pulsating, knocking walls down until there are no partitions anymore, no borders, no castle to keep him in.

An alarm sets off. He pushes through. And just like that, he steps into a dark hotel room.

“Sorry to wake you. I forgot to tell you something.”

*

A man with hair like shoe polish and a chin that can cut through time is holding a recorder to his mouth as he says something about the woods to someone she feels she should know. She suspects they keep some people away from her gaze, hide them. It’s hard to be sure, with the blinds always closed. Maybe she forgets.

There are accidents too. Bobby Briggs tells Laura he loves her, truly, not like high schoolers are supposed to love, but she blinks, dust in her eye, and Laura is laughing at him, calling him names. You can’t be everywhere. Even though she makes sure to have pictures of angels whose faces are reminders of hers hung around.

There is no order to this. On the screen, another face breaks like Chinese porcelain. _He_ disagrees, of course, because he doesn’t know that there is a difference between a pattern and a plot. He should watch more TV. She was once exiled, she knows these things simply happen. Catastrophes. This is why she looks after them, reminding them of all the things that have not been crushed, all that remains. When she watches them, it’s with the certitude that they are there, just there, for more than simply meaning something. They are everything above that, and someone has to let them know.

Go tell _Him_ this, though, he likes to play chess. Sighing, she takes another sip of milk.

*

Margaret Lanterman’s cottage gives off a sense of hostility he has yet to explain to himself, and it’s the only place where he feels like he’s sneaking in, a common thief, among the painted tea cups and the lace aprons. The log is there, placed on the table for him, instead of being pressed against Margaret’s sleeping body like every other night. She can always tell when he’s coming, but she refuses to meet him, which is rather logical. Why she insists to leave him pieces of gum on a plate, on the other hand, is beyond him, when nothing should ever be. Not that it matters so much.

As he bends forward to whisper to the log, unexpectedly, he finds himself hesitating. The piece of wood faintly creaks.

“The answer is in the question,” he confides. “Do not eat dirt. It’s time to tell what you saw.”

The log stares. He shouldn’t see it that way, but somehow it cannot be helped. He’s never sure that it will repeat what he says to it faithfully, which makes the risk so huge, and for now there is no better solution. He would like to understand, though, why he’s under the impression that the log hates him. Impressions are not his territory; making good ones is even more foreign. In this house, the signs are always blurred, and he knows who he blames for it. On an impulse, he reaches out, stopping himself inches from the pulsating wood. No. He’s not thinking clearly.

The log will sleep on Margaret’s chest tomorrow, and everything will be fine. He’s arranged it.

Maybe his ideas are not good in the traditional sense, but at least he’s got a direction. With Her, nothing will ever change. The other side of the House will keep pushing and pushing, the record will break, the balance ruined, and she will continue to watch, sleep, not helping in any way.

He tries. But for some reason, he always ends up killing birds.

*

It’s not war, what is between them. It’s not peace either. They both lie, in their own way. Watch. Listen.

She never seems to age, he reflects as she walks past him slowly, barely sparing him a look, dragging all the folds of her dress behind her like an antique statue. He does. It’s the cost of being seen, the cost of acting, and all the eyes that have swept over his face in incomprehension have damaged it.

He reminds her of a butler, dressed up like this, his bow tie the same color as the thing that always get stuck under her nails. Who are you serving, she wants to ask. And why are you keeping watch as if there were somebody else, watching you?

Isn’t it funny?

He looks more like a waiter than a butler, if you pay attention. And her, well, she’s tender like meat, and easily bored.

But sometimes he feels her eyes on him, and wonders what it is he’s really doing.

But sometimes she sees him standing in the frame of a door, listening to her humming, and wonders if she couldn’t have done something more.

They were always headed for a collision.

*

At first, it’s nothing but ordinary. He follows his plan, opening a path to end the suffering, and ruining a romance she was very involved in. She resents him – she loved this arc – but this is before she learns what he has in store.

Worn out, she has put on one of her favorite tunes, and let it play on a loop like a lullaby. She’s fallen asleep.

A hand scratches her record. She gets up from the couch much faster than the many layers of her dress usually allows her to, the sound of sharp garment cutting through the air with a sort of lag. He’s in front of her, holding a curtain, stepping out. Through the TV screen, she sees him replace the singer of her song on the stage

“It is happening again.”

_It is happening again. _

No. She holds her breath. The pomegranate quarter she’s holding explodes into her palm, burgundy juice dripping all along her forearm. On her screen the face of Dale Cooper, white as milk and ebony black, is almost paralyzed, looking up but never quite meeting her gaze through the glass. Oh, she forgot herself. It’s always at times like these, during her absence, that He makes a mess of things.

But she’s here now. Her eyes are wide open. Slowly, taking smalls steps, the Milk Man approaches. It was never quite clear for which of them he was working: he’s deaf, and always got his instructions half wrong. That last time when the agent was bleeding all over his carpet, they both tried to intervene – she usually doesn’t but the suspense was killing her – and the result, in her opinion, was an oddly mixed one. Today, though, he’s his spokesperson.

“I’m so sorry.”

Someone begins to cry, the whole world progressively tinting a darker shade of red. She resumes her gentle swinging.

*

From there, it all goes sour, the milk and the fruits, the repeating stories.

The man who used to be Cooper is standing in a bathroom. She watches him. She watches him, as he looks up. She watches him and yet, despite her efforts, he knocks his head against the mirror, and the one that is hanging above her on the couch explodes. She jumps out, and goes to swift off the TV.

_He_’s there when she turns around, standing under the candelabra. They’ve lost Cooper, at least for now. The red room has never seen so many newcomers. It’s very hard for her to see them properly when they are in there – their hearts beat backward, and she has trouble catching her breath, their cold, smooth skin dissolving under her palm.

She stares at Him.

_Did this help_, she doesn’t say, but he hears it anyway along with the acid skepticism of her raised eyebrow. _Are you satisfied?_

_That is where he needed to be_, he wants to say. _He was always headed there. He was always, already, inside. __One__ ha__s__ to go in to hope __one__ will one day go out_.

She clicks her tongue, and the beginning of a headache settles between his ears.

Then, unexpectedly, she sees his eyes water.

This is new. Nothing is ever new, in here.

_It’s okay_, she doesn’t say. _The sadness always comes, sooner or later. _

Carefully, she takes his hand, that has never grasped or touched anything substantial, that was always full of ideas, and holds on.

_I __am__ so sorry_, she does not say, but he feels it anyway. _I’m afraid this will happen again._

At this point, they both know it.

There is a song playing on her gramophone now: it’s lively and cheerful, and entirely at odds with the situation, he thinks. Then he looks at her and there’s that smile again, encouraging him not to be too naive. He listens. The giddy voices speak of the disappearance of lovers, the crumbling of palaces and for some reason, of milk not drunk. There is a gap between the tune and the lyrics in which he thinks he might be falling, again and again, but she’s still holding his hand, not letting go, never blinking. As she tilts her head, out of rhythm, the glow that usually surrounds her intensifies, and he reaches out, offering her his other hand. The space that exists between them is purposefully not filled; inside their extended arms, in the center, is now a perfect circle of air. A single tear glides down his cheek, so slowly it seems to be flowing back and forth. There’s a tear in the fabric of things, impossible to mend, and there go all the best laid plans.

It falls into the circle. And then, it was always inside. It’s in their home now. They’d better learn to live with it.

Pulling him by the hand, she makes him sit down on the couch next to her. He seems out of place, tall and straight, feet firmly planted on the ground. Briefly she presses her palm against his forehead, checking for fever. One can never be too careful. But he’s fine, mostly, so she pats him on the knee and hands him a plate of pomegranate biscuits insistently until he takes one, while she wonders if she should turn the TV back on. She glances at him, and then smiles.

_I will not try to make sense of you_, he wants to say.

_Oh, I know._

**Author's Note:**

> [booming TV host voice]: "And now, how many references can you spot, ladies and gentlefolks?"
> 
> Usual reminder that it's not my first language. This was sort of a wild ride. In case anyone's wondering, the final song they're listening to is No Milk Today by Herman's Hermits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LesWfbkJJlQ) in my personal headcanon and yes, this is completely at odds with the situation, but I have my reasons.  
Also, please go read Rae Armantrout's "Upper World", which is about the peaksiest poem ever, especially regarding the Lodges/castle/spirits dimension : https://poets.org/poem/upper-world. I read a number of poems about the Underworld to write this, but this is I think my favourite.


End file.
